Line #21 Horrible/TabletopGames


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9	->''"[S]aying that this game should be burned is [[InsultToRocks an insult to fire]]."''
10	-->--'''Jason Sartin''', in his review of ''TabletopGame/{{FATAL}}''
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12	You know those old board games, card games, and roleplaying games you keep in your closet or attic? Yeah... you might want to ''keep'' a few of [[DarthWiki/SoBadItsHorrible those]] in your closet, lest somebody sees them and tries to use it against you in court... especially if it's one of these.
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14	'''''Important Note:''''' Merely being offensive in its subject matter is not enough to justify a work as Horrible. Hard as it is to imagine at times, there is a market for all types of deviancy (no matter how small a niche it is). It has to ''fail to appeal even to that niche'' to qualify as this. Additionally, to ensure that the work is judged with a clear mind and the hatred isn't just a knee-jerk reaction, as well as to allow opinions to properly form, '''[[Administrivia/NoRecentExamplesPlease examples should not be added until at least one month after release]]'''. This includes "sneaking" the entries onto the pages ahead of time by adding them and then just commenting them out.
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17	!!Examples (in more-or-less alphabetical order):
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20	[[folder:Tabletop RPG]]
21	* RTG released a '''''Anime/DragonBallZ'' RPG'''. The execution was just as ludicrous as it sounds -- stat blocks for characters from the series had attacks that required rolling upwards of 30 dice... and that was just for the Saiyan Saga. The book itself was poorly written and poorly laid out, and it suffered from a lot of filler devoted to only marginally-relevant subjects, such as customizing action figures for use as game pieces. Three sourcebooks were released (with more cancelled), but the Fusion system was ''horribly'' suited to ''DBZ'' -- the creators took a system with expected stat values between 1-10 (involving rolls of only 3d6 to resolve checks) and fed stats in the ''hundreds'' into it. "Power levels" amounted to nothing more than MP, but were used as the basis for gaining XP from a fight.
22	* '''''TabletopGame/{{FATAL}}''''' is, hands down, the all-time reigning champion of horrible [=RPGs=], and there's a lot to say about it:
23	** The rolling system is completely broken. One of the game's most basic rolls is [=4d100/2-1=] -- to break that down, you take a hundred-sided die, roll it four times, sum the results, divide in half, and subtract one. You do this for anything requiring a bell curve, including all 17 of your character's stats. Later versions "improved" it -- to [=10d100/5-1=], which is rolling a hundred-sided die ''ten'' times, sum the results, divide by five, and subtract one. The rolls are like this because the book insists that having the stats on a bell curve makes the results more realistic, but it completely destroys any fun one could have with how crushingly long it takes.
24	** The character system is ''also'' completely broken. It takes forever to draw up a character thanks to the aforementioned dice rolling, taking up a ''full third'' of a [[{{Doorstopper}} more than 900-page tome]]. Races are poorly thought out -- there are 16 of them, but they all [[FantasticRacism hate each other so much]] that it's totally implausible to form an adventuring party from them, and nearly all of them eat people and/or die in sunlight, leaving ordinary humans (which the manual states [[MonochromeCasting are all white]] for "historical accuracy") as the only remotely viable option. Classes are broken -- all earn experience in different ways, but some are incomplete, many are civilian jobs no player would want, and for some it's possible to die of old age before reaching ''Level 2''. Stats are complex and include things like head size, social and marital status, and [[{{Squick}} anal circumference]]. And given the broken nature of the rolling system, in early editions it was possible for "anal circumference" to be [[BodyHorror zero]] or [[AlienGeometries negative]].
25	** The magic system is -- yep, [[RuleOfThree completely broken]]. Spells are either useless in normal play, pointlessly situational, time-consuming and impractical, needlessly risky, or useful only for sexual situations. Magical items tend to consist of sophomoric, racist jokes. Its highlight is the [[TitleDrop namesake spell]], which [[ApocalypseHow kills everything in the world]] -- and is part of the miscast table.
26	** But the biggest problem with the game is its [[VulgarHumor all-around contempt for basic human decency]] -- it's horrifyingly racist and sexist, with the odd bit of queerphobia thrown in. Those races no one wants to play as are mostly bizarre ethnic stereotypes. Sex happens ''all the time'' in this game, to the point where it's possible to accidentally[[note]]on part of the human players; the game would consider this your player characters working as intended[[/note]] rape an opponent to death ''during combat''. (But to determine the results of sex, the player must solve quadratic equations, which grinds the pace of the game to a crawl.) The overall tone is especially cruel toward women -- the most fleshed-out thing in the whole game is prostitution, and women are either [[StayInTheKitchen housewives]], whores, or victims of sexual violence and ritual sacrifice (that is itself disturbingly sexualized). Female player characters suffer arbitrary penalties in just about every aspect of their existence, from naturally-reduced stats to being more vulnerable to mind-control spells (that explicitly ''only'' work on women). The game seems to assume you'll be playing as an asshole rapist, and if you aren't, it tries to push you towards it at every opportunity.
27	** All of this sounds like some edgy {{Troll}} attempt, but the authors are ''dead serious'' about this game. All of that horrifying rape and offensiveness is buried under mountains of dull charts and monotonous, barely-relevant stats that don't add to the shock value and take away any reason to play it ironically. The definitive review of this game, by [=RPG.net=] reviewers Darren [=MacLennan=] and Jason Sartin, is [[https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml a very detailed, horrific, NSFW ordeal]] that laid out its case meticulously and got a rise out of the game's authors, who proved they CantTakeCriticism. At the very least, F.A.T.A.L.'s official [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy8hjxHuRHk theme song]] is [[SoBadItsGood pure comedy gold]].
28	* The '''''Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse'' RPG''' was released by FASA in 1985 to cash in on the fad at the time. It was intended to introduce 8 to 10-year-olds to [=RPGs=], but even for adults, it was close to being completely unplayable. Its combat system is its undoing, as it's needlessly complicated and missing some important rules[[labelnote:example]]Defending requires rolling 1d6 and adding the character's skill -- but the rule neglects to mention ''which'' skill[[/labelnote]] or even directly contradicts itself[[labelnote:example]]A monster is listed as having two "attack" options, but the very next sentence claims it "always defends"[[/labelnote]]. Spells are particularly ill-defined, with later releases including a card that rather than explaining the rules, said they would be included in a future edition (which never came out). Players have to consult a complex table to see how an enemy reacts to being hit before they can even do damage. And the game also gave the impression that the writers had never watched the source material -- Teela, for example, is a magic user in the game but a BadassNormal in the original, and [[PluckyComicRelief Orko]] of all people gets offensive spells.
29	* '''''TabletopGame/RacialHolyWar''''' was made by a white supremacist group called The Creativity Movement, and it's pretty clear that pushing their ideology was more important to them than making a good RPG. The plot is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin right there in the title]]: set in the future, the Jews have taken over the world, and you play as the plucky white LaResistance who will overthrow them. It reads like an over-the-top parody of neo-Nazism, or like someone read ''Literature/TheProtocolsOfTheEldersOfZion'' but didn't feel quite up to tackling ''Literature/MeinKampf''. The game's most ridiculous feature is that every enemy race has a SpecialAttack based on racial stereotypes, which ends up making the whites look far less badass than what the writers intended; Jews can [[GreedyJew bribe them not to attack]], and Black people can debilitate them with their body odor. Even if you're not offended by its hateful premise, there's no fun to be had with this game, as the rules are horrible, broken, and unfinished, including complete omission of rules regarding player-character attack resolution -- put simply, the game forgot to tell you how to attack things. The Intimidation mechanic is the most broken, adding up the score of every combatant on each side, meaning a handful of heavily armed White Warriors could be scared shitless by a hundred Jewish babies. And the game's cover is outright stolen from ''Film/TheHillsHaveEyes1977'' with almost no changes. It's so bad, [[Website/FourChan 1d4chan]] [[https://1d6chan.miraheze.org/wiki/Racial_Holy_War considers the game]] worse than ''TabletopGame/{{FATAL}}'' -- the material lacks shock value, doesn't [[CrossesTheLineTwice cross the line twice]], and is too reprehensible and pitiful to be enjoyed ironically. More info [[http://web.archive.org/web/20080212094700/http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/rahowasucks.html here]].
30	* '''''TabletopGame/SpawnOfFashan''''' is a [[https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_6157.phtml classic]] example from 1981 that has become the standard by which bad tabletop [=RPGs=] are measured. For starters, the rulebook is a poorly-organized mess with rules that constantly reference other rules (and those other rules often reference ''other rules''), forcing you to jump around all ninety-six pages without any index to help direct you. Things aren't much better if you can actually start playing, as the game is quite literally unfinished. There are many cases where the rules are too vague or outright missing, and only about a third of all enemies have a stat block. Combat is tedious, requiring an excessive number of charts and math equations to determine the outcome of every action. Not to mention, it features one of the most ridiculous instances of GameFavoredGender ever: female characters have all stats but Charisma ''halved'', which is so bad the rulebook has a disclaimer from the creator [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial saying that he's not sexist]]. It especially stands out since, unlike ''F.A.T.A.L.'', ''Spawn of Fashan'' doesn't have any other shocking or offensive content. The game reportedly only sold a dozen or so copies on release, and would've faded into obscurity had it not ended up in an AprilFoolsDay review from ''Magazine/{{Dragon}}''.
31	* '''''Literature/{{Wraeththu}}: From Enchantment to Fulfilment''''' is an [[CanonDefilement "adaptation"]] of Creator/StormConstantine's fantasy series which began life as a fanfiction guide before blooming into an RPG homebrew that was sold for $40 USD. The series is already a [[AudienceAlienatingPremise hard sell for a casual audience]], but the game paints it in the absolute worst light possible; it casts the player characters as [[SmugSnake pretentious and glamorous sociopaths]], takes place in a dull and hopeless world, and, despite touting itself as LGBTQ+ friendly, skews heavily to the interests of a YaoiFangirl (despite allegedly being written by a man) in that it unintentionally presents queer men as a fantasy race unto themselves, with female characters and any potential for queer female sexuality being an afterthought at best. As a game, the instructions go out of their way to be as unhelpful to a novice GameMaster as possible, leaving terms undefined ([[FanMyopia especially those from the books]]). The game also suffers from poorly thought-out, gut-wrenching mechanics: among other transgressions, chain mail armor transfers a statistical immunity to ''flamethrowers''. A detailed review can be read [[https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14347.phtml here.]]
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34	[[folder:Board Games]]
35	* '''''Intelligent Design vs. Evolution''''' utterly fails to be a fun game, regardless of one's religious views. It's a simple board game where two players or teams must move their pieces to the end of the board while gaining "brain cards" and answering questions. There are only 250 question cards (by comparison, ''Trivial Pursuit'' has 1,000 with six questions each), and many of them don't have questions at all; they're just potshots at evolution, AdHominem attacks, attempts at proselytization, or random Bible quotes. A few use InsaneTrollLogic, like one using the NoTrueScotsman fallacy to prove there are no {{hypocrite}}s in "the Church". Information on the cards is not only wrong or misquoted, it's also often not proofread; one memorable card hits all these points by citing as its source "[[Website/{{Wikipedia}} Wickipedia]]". The blog Freaking Awesome takes a look at it [[http://freakingawesome.net/2012/01/09/intelligent-design-vs-evolution-the-board-game-an-analysis/ here]].
36	* '''''Film/JurassicParkIII: Island Survival Game''''' is an overly simplistic "roll and move" game whose primary failure is the utter lack of strategy designed into it. Two players control either the humans or the dinosaurs; the humans must escape the island, while the dinosaurs try to kill the humans. The dinos are at an intrinsic disadvantage, in part because the human player can always roll to escape during a dino attack and move forward several spaces. The [[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vbOSVYVyX2I/U_IyleOpoLI/AAAAAAAAIls/DOY_LdOuwAs/s1600/20140818_111955.jpg game board]] is split into five sections, but the game is so linear that there's no real incentive to choose any one over the other. You can draw cards, but a strict reading of the rules suggests they must be used immediately rather than saved for later. The humans' win condition amounts to landing on the final space and hoping you draw the win card. All this amounts to a LuckBasedMission. Even the craftsmanship is terrible; while the modeled plastic dinosaur pieces are okay, the cards, life chips, and human character pieces are all made of cheap cardboard, and the game board's illustration of the island is sparse and ugly. ''Critical Hits'' [[http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2007/04/26/jurassic-park-3-island-survival-game-a-review/ gave the game]] a 2/10, noting that the only potential fun to be had would be from ignoring the given rules and simply role-playing your own scenario with the pieces.
37	* '''''Monopoly Global Village: Pokemon GO''''' is a knockoff version of ''Monopoly'' made to cash in on ''VideoGame/PokemonGo''. The game was just regular Monopoly just with the spaces changed to real-life cities and costs having an extra zero (you will run out of currency really fast if you played the game, unlike the original Monopoly), the game has nothing to do with Pokemon except for the box and the centre of the board being changed, the game board was noted to be so flimsy that there was no way to get it to lay down flat, the player tokens and dice were extremely tiny (for the player pieces, they could have at least used some of those knockoff Pokemon miniatures you can find online), the money was printed using cheap paper and would tear easily, the box and game board were made out of poor quality plastic and the building pieces were extremely poorly molded. Not to mention that half the renders on the packaging and on the game board have nothing to do with Pokemon Go (such as fanart of the Kanto starters playing Gameboy, Charizard, Ivysaur and Jigglypuff from the Super Smash Bros series, Dawn, Red and Ethan from the main series games, Detective Pikachu, and the Eeveelutions from Pokemon Stadium). Also, Seoul and Tokyo cost the least, possibly due to China's relations with Japan and Korea. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lZeH_c5uts Phelan Porteous was so unimpressed by it that he gave it a rating of 2 out of 10]] .
38	* '''''Oneupmanship: Mine's Bigger''''' is a 2013 roll-and-move game. The goal is to be the first player to get $100,000 by investing in real estate, playing the stock market, gambling, and acquiring valuable items. That doesn't sound too bad, but there's a good reason Tom Vasel of ''WebVideo/TheDiceTower'' subtitled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18b0XYf05tA his review]] "How NOT to design a game". It plays like a demented, low-rate ''TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}}'' clone; one space forces you to pay 20% of everything you have (this is a pain to calculate, which may be why ''Monopoly'' uses fixed amounts), and the "Free Parking Jackpot" {{House Rule\|s}} is codified in the game (when in ''Monopoly'' it's not a rule because it causes severe EndingFatigue). You can ignore paying for any of your other buildings if you own the tallest on the board. The random mechanics can be cruel, with the worst being the "Do or Die" space in which you force another player into betting ''all your properties'' on a single roll. The Chance card equivalents have weird requirements like playing a thumb war with an opponent or standing on one foot singing "The Star-Spangled Banner". If one player declares bankruptcy, ''every other player'' must do so as well, and the game ends in a draw. And the components are lazily designed and cheap, especially the paper money, which looks like it was just printed out on computer paper. And to top it all off, there's a TakingYouWithMe mechanic that can [[NegatedMomentOfAwesome negate any victory]]; if any player wins, any other player can take a "bitter pill" -- with the game coming with bitterly-flavored breath mints to act as said pills, with no ingredients list -- to bring both themselves and the would-be victor back down to zero, and the game continues from there, [[EndlessGame with the only real limit to how many times this can be repeated being the players' patience]]. It was apparently designed to be a parody of the nonsensical lifestyles of the rich, but its execution was just lacking.
39	* '''''Power Lunch''''' is a variant of Rummy in which players meld together cards of celebrities sitting at a restaurant table. If your cards don't match any sets, you explain why they'd be sitting together, and the opponents vote on it -- and there's nothing stopping them from rejecting them every time. It also [[TimeMarchesOn went outdated quickly]], as it was made in 1994 and the celebrities were very much popular only around that time, making it impossible to play in later decades just because no one knows who they are. Only one version was made of this game, and [[http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2910/power-lunch Board Game Geek]] gave it a rating of 2.60 out of 10.
40	* '''''TabletopGame/RapRat''''' is a board game for kids made in 1992 which used [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW5m3ix8KuI a VHS tape]] as part of the game. You would put in the tape, roll a color-coded die, and move around the board. Every time you land on a space in your color, you would get a MacGuffin piece; you get ten, and you win. Except the board is an infinite loop, making it pretty much useless[[note]]although not in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkSx9Sd83PI the PAL version]], which uses a numbered die[[/note]]. Instead, the TV was used for Rap Rat, an insufferable and [[NightmareFuel frankly creepy]] cartoon rat with oversized ears and fish-like eyes, to interrupt the players to [[ContinueYourMissionDammit tell them to do things]] and/or rap (actually, talk while [[BrokenRecord skipping over the same word several times]]) while eating a block of cheese for 10 minutes [[note]]15 minutes in the PAL version[[/note]] -- with all players losing if he finishes before a player wins, which is extremely difficult to do because the whole game is a LuckBasedMission. The rules themselves are also quite broken -- at one point Rap Rat tells a player skip a turn based on their age, [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable meaning that any adult player might be unintentionally eliminated from the game]]. Needless to say, you are much better off playing without the VHS tape at all. It says something when Rap Rat has a [[http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Rap_Rat creepypasta]], which is pretty much the only reason why anyone nowadays has heard of him. Most damningly, its publisher was already known for the much better horror-themed VHS board game ''TabletopGame/{{Atmosfear}}'', suggesting it was a matter of just trying to market to kids and failing miserably. Matt Sall of the website ''Bell of Lost Souls'' reviews it [[https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/04/board-games-retro-rap-rat-is-pure-nightmare-fuel.html here]].
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43	[[folder:Card Games]]
44	* '''''Havic: the Bothering''''' is a "parody" of ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' which actually predates the first official ''Magic'' SelfParody set ''Unglued''. The game itself plays exactly like an extremely dumbed-down version of ''Magic'', so much so that "THIS IS A PARODY" was printed on the starter deck boxes and the rules card explicitly tells players ''not'' to build their own decks, [[WritingAroundTrademarks all in an attempt to avoid legal issues from Wizards of the Coast]]. (Didn't work, and the game's creators were banned from [=GenCon=] thanks to [[ScrewedByTheLawyers legal maneuvering by WotC]]). But beyond that, the game itself is bad, with most cards being borderline or outright unplayable, a shallow card pool (96 cards!), terrible "artwork", and humor which nobody would find amusing. The rules were all printed on a single card included in each starter deck, which fails to explain certain mechanics, comes up short in explaining others, reads like a run-on sentence, and abounds with [[RougeAnglesOfSatin misspellings]]. Certain cards also have typos. You can check out the game and its history [[https://www.magiclibrarities.net/624-rarities-havic-the-bothering-cards-english-cards-index.html here]].
45	* '''''Redakai''''' was an attempt by [=SpinMaster=] to [[FollowTheLeader capitalize on the popularity]] of ''TabletopGame/{{Bakugan}}'', and wound up being a prime example of every design flaw a CollectibleCardGame can have. Cards were made of clear plastic with lithographic designs that would "animate" when moved, allowing the cards to layer their effects by being stacked on each other. This was a DancingBear at best, but in execution was a ''massive'' detriment, because it was impossible to make a unified card back, and the specialized black container (sold separately of course) didn't even work -- in other words, you could recognize cards from the back. The extra material costs made the starter decks and boosters far more expensive than its competitors. Both of the game's expansions reprinted cards from the first set as Rares, meaning many boosters contained [[JunkRare nothing of value]]. Marketing failures aside, game balance was atrocious and clearly untested; there were many examples of PowerCreep, several cards gave you an ExtraTurn at no cost, and some one-sided floodgates would lock the opponent out of the game. There was even an infinite loop one-turn-kill that could be executed as early as the third turn, all the pieces of which could be found in ''one starter deck''. Throw in low-quality action figures, oodles of overpriced peripherals, and a SoOkayItsAverage tie-in [[WesternAnimation/{{Redakai}} cartoon]], and you have an utter flop. Despite the huge marketing push, ''Redakai'' floundered around for only six months before being cancelled entirely. WebVideo/{{Kohdok}} discusses it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quOjWWfvFGI here]].
46	* '''''TabletopGame/{{Spellfire}}''''' is a CCG based on ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' made in the FollowTheLeader rush after ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' popularized the concept of collectible card games. Unfortunately, several factors helped kill the game. They had bad rules, artwork recycled from ''Dragon Magazine'' and old book covers, and horrendous craftsmanship -- rare and powerful figures were depicted as ''photographs'' of dressed-up employees, mundane household items, or poorly-made models. When your cards being printed on flimsy photo paper is the least of your concerns, you know you're in trouble.
47	* The original version of the '''''Top Trumps: Space Phenomena''''' set is embarrassingly bad. The parent game is well-respected and has had a ton of expansions, mostly from its simplicity; you compare statistics on each card, whoever had the better one wins the round, and you learn about various things in the process. ''Space Phenomena'', however, is filled with cards that have statistics that are uselessly low or have almost every category listed as "N/A", use incompatible units like displaying the speed of some objects in kilometers per hour but others relative to the speed of Earth's orbit in Earth years, have many identical statistics due to the objects being located on Earth, use misleading statistics such as suggesting that Venus wasn't discovered until 1990 or the Moon wasn't discovered until 1651[[note]]the "year of discovery" for objects with no traceable discovery date is instead the year of important discoveries around them, although this leads to absurd things like Ganymede being known for longer than '''the Sun'''[[/note]], or are just plain incorrect like Halley's Comet being -6,000,000 Earth masses as if it somehow weighed a negative amount. All of this combined to make a game that was dubiously educational and no fun to actually play. A year after its release, ''Top Trumps'' apologized and reprinted the set with better objects and more consistent stats. You can watch [[Creator/StuartAshen Ashens]] rip the original version apart [[http://youtu.be/1Us3iSgixRI here]].
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50	[[folder:Other]]
51	* '''''[=BreaKeys=]''''' was a collectible trading game whose main gimmick was literally breaking your opponent's game piece when they lost. The point was to clip two pieces together and twist them until one snapped, and go until only one key was left standing. ''[=BreaKeys=]'' pieces apparently came in bags of 20 for $20, which could be wasted in less than a minute in a game. Because the weaker pieces would always be the first ones to break, the law of collectible games -- [[PowerEqualsRarity the rarer the game piece, the stronger it is]] -- does not apply here, as the stronger keys would inevitably be all anyone had left. Furthermore, the broken plastic pieces were fairly sharp and could cause messes and small injuries. And the icing on the cake: you could just feel, with your fingers, how strong each key was before using it. Watch [[WebVideo/FamiliarFaces CR]] review it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu6Vqco4rpk here]].
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Context Horrible / TabletopGames